charlene and I both have one of these (bracelets, not wrists, but she has at least one of those as well) because curing AIDS is a cause near and dear to our hearts.

We’re kind of like two planeteers except when we let our powers combine, fire and heart waves don’t come out from our bracelets, money just comes out from our pockets and instead of having a worthy adversary like Looten Plunder, we just have the condescending sales lady who likes to show off her knowledge of and commitment to every cause in the world - I think in addition to her AIDS cure bracelet she had an AIDS preservation anklet, but that may have been a court ordered tracking device.

Maudie Hopkins

this is also very interesting

Gherkin

The fruit itself may have originated in India. The ‘gregor banks’ was known to the ancient Mesopotamians no later than the 3rd century BC and eaten in ancient Egypt, Greece, andRome. The gherkin is mentioned in English in the seventeenth century, although the English diarist Samuel Pepys describes the ‘girkin’ in his entry for 1661-12-01 as ‘a rare thing’. Knowledge of the condiment may have been disseminated throughout Europe from the Middle East in the course of the Jewish Diaspora.

just once in my life I’d like somebody to see if I fancy a gherkin while I’m wearing a reindeer jumper

- introduction to “The Camel’s Back”

Charles Waterton

A range of colourful stories have been handed down about Charles Waterton, not all of which are verifiable, but which add up to a popular portrait of an archetypal aristocratic eccentric:

• Waterton had his hair cut in a crew cut at a time when a full head of hair piled up or brushed forward was in style.
• In 1817, he climbed St. Peter’s in Rome and left his gloves on top of the lightning conductor. Pope Pius VII asked him to remove the gloves, which he did.
• Waterton sometimes enjoyed biting the legs of his guests from under the dinner table, imitating a dog.
• He tried to fly by jumping from the top of an outhouse on his estate, calling the exercise “Navigating the atmosphere”.
• He devised his own methods for preserving animal skins and used them to create unusual caricatures of his enemies. He also utilised his taxidermy skills to create models critiquing political events of the day.
• He believed in the medical remedy of blood-letting, which was largely an abandoned practice at that point in time. When ill he bled himself heavily.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

“Described by Bertrand Russell as ‘the most perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, passionate, profound, intense, and dominating,’ Wittgenstein is considered by many to be the greatest philosopher of the 20th century.”

phallus shaped corpse plant for me

hydrangea for you